Sat42 wrote:That's cool! Actually I know that one day (not right now, too busy!) I'd be interested in learning about animating models and such, so out of curiosity - which programme do you use? Is it skeletal or vertex-based?
Thanks
Blender is the tool I use for modelling, and the model is skeletal based rather than vertex based because it could lead to other possibilities in the (near?) future.
I'd say give it ago, as Blender is free. There are some simple character animation (that includes rigging a character to a skeleton) tutorials that explain how to set up the process. All of the stock Unreal models packed into the games files are without any skeletons/animation sets though, unless you do something to attach every frame independently to the skeleton to make sure the original animations remain 100% accurate (where i think you could be better off redoing all of the characters animations yourself). So you will also, need to create another skeletal structure for that character in an appropriate fashion.
But yeah, go for it when you get the time available, also do a search for the 12 principals of animation. Hopefully this helps.